The following statement from Malaysia's current prime minister has sparked controversies, at least among Indonesians. Here what he exactly said, in verbatim:

We also agree, and we thank the President for agreeing with Malaysia, to strengthen the Malay language which is a regional language, namely Malaysian Malay, Indonesian Malay, Brunei Malay, Southern Thai Malay, Champa Malay in Cambodia, Malay in the Philippines, and Malay in Singapore. We agree that in every international forum, the President and I will use Malay as our medium of communication. And we agree that if we work together to strengthen the Malay language, the language may one day be made the language of the ASEAN.

Read more: https://setkab.go.id/en/joint-press-statement-of-president-of-the-republic-of-indonesia-and-prime-minister-of-malaysia-at-the-merdeka-palace-jakarta-april-1-2022/

What most Indonesians disagree with is what he said at the end of the statement, in which he wished Malay to be the language of ASEAN.

Indonesia's current minister of education then issued a statement in response to this. He emphasised that it is more likely for Indonesian to be the language of ASEAN due to a number of considerations (history, law, linguistic, etc). Here is what he said (in Indonesian)

"Dengan semua keunggulan yang dimiliki bahasa Indonesia dari aspek historis, hukum, dan linguistik, serta bagaimana bahasa Indonesia telah menjadi bahasa yang diakui secara internasional, sudah selayaknya bahasa Indonesia duduk di posisi terdepan, dan jika memungkinkan menjadi bahasa pengantar untuk pertemuan-pertemuan resmi ASEAN," katanya.

Read more: https://www.cnbcindonesia.com/news/20220405131904-4-328932/menteri-nadiem-tolak-bahasa-melayu-jadi-bahasa-asean-kenapa

Let me bring this problem into a context. ASEAN is some sort of international community for Southeast Asian countries. Currently the working language of ASEAN is English. There have been some proposals to add an additional working language, but so far nothing works. The languages proposed are as follows:

French language by Vietnam (1995)

Malaysian language by Malaysia (1997)

Indonesian language by Indonesia (2011)

Now, here is my take on the controversy: we need to have a shared definition of what constitute Malay language.